Sunday, March 31, 2013

Staunton, March 31 – Some Russian
commentators suggest that the Popular Front Vladimir Putin addressed last week
will replace the increasingly unpopular United Russia as the party of power.
Others argue it will usher in a new era of Russian politics. And one says its
format reflects Putin’s attachment to what he saw while a KGB officer in East
Germany.

Mariya
Lippman of the Moscow Carnegie Center, told Kavkaz-uzel that given the declining
popularity of United Russia, the All-Russian Popular Front “could replace ‘United
Russia’ as the ruling force,” with its currently “amorphous organization”
becoming “a significant structure.”

Dmitry Oreshkin, a Moscow political
scientist, in contrast, suggested to the same news service that the front will “become
for Vladimir Putin an alternative not so much to ‘United Russia’as to allinstitutions of public policy” including
paties and parliamentarianism “which have been discredited.”

In his view, the Front will not
become a political party for elections but means by which Putin can reach out
to the majority of the population. In that event, “instead of administered or
sovereign democracy,” Russia will have “all-people democracy,” one much less
institutionalized than the current version.

And Aleksey Makarkin, the general
director of the Moscow Center of Political Technologies, said that the Front is
something Putin now needs for the preservation of his own personal power.“The voter will search for an alternative to
the party of power,” the analyst says, “and one will be offered him – the popular”
one of a front.

According to Lippman, there are two
scenarios for the transfer of power from United Russia to the Popular Front.
The first would require snap elections so that everything could be calm and in
place before the Sochi Olympiad. But the second is more likely and would have
the Front “peacefully” take part in the scheduled 2016 vote.

Oreshkin for his part suggests that
the Front will be able to play such a role or bring the Kremlin significant
dividends in that regard.In his view,
the Front reflects the Kremlin’s lack of alternatives.

Another analyst, Aleksey Mukhin of
the Center for Political Information told Kavkaz-Uzel that such predictions are
“too simple and banal.” In fact, he says, Putin is “planning to create his own group
of support at various ends of the Russian political field,” in order to have
the opportunity for maneuver beyond the establishment views of United Russia.

Writing in KM.ru, Viktor Matynyuk
argues that the Popular Front is first and foremost about giving the appearance
of a renewal of the powers that be by suggesting that the top leader is open to
new ideas from the bottom and allowing people to pose questions even if Putin
and other leaders will not answer them directly in such choreographed shows.

But
perhaps the most interesting and certainly the most intriguing idea is offered
by Pavel Salin, the director of the Center for Political Research at Moscow’s
Financial University.He argues that the
future of the Popular Front is as “an umbrella brand and structure” which will
include United Russia and help the authorities “imitate” political renewal.

Because this new brand entirely
depends on Putin, it “will disappear sooner than [his] brand.”But the form of a popular front itself is
clearly a reflection, Salin says, of “the sympathy of our president for the
model which existed in the German Democratic Republic where he served in the
1980s and had the chance to become acquainted with the party system there.

In the GDR, he continues, there “really
was something similar” to the All-Russian Popular Front, when under the aegis
of one social movement were united” all kinds of political and social trends.
At the same time, as Putin certainly knows but Salin doesn’t note, the GDR was
swept away a few years later, a fate the Russian president certainly does not
want to share.

Staunton, March 31 – There are “two
worlds” in the North Caucasus with distinctive cultures, one consisting of “the
people of the force structures” whose arbitrariness, corruption and criminality
are promoting the rise of the other, one often characterized by terrorism and
extremism, according to a longtime commentator on that region.

And the only way out, Maksim
Shevchenko, the chief editor of “Kavkazskaya politika,” argues, is for the
federal center to reach out over the heads of the first world to members of the
second who are acting as they are only because the force structures leave them
with no other choice and who have, perhaps surprisingly, a reservoir of
sympathy for Moscow.

Shevchenko made that provocative
argument in a March 14 speech to the Social Council of the North Caucasus
Federal District, the text of which was posted on Friday evening, the logic of
which deserves careful consideration even if both of the “worlds” he is talking
about are likely to reject it at least on first reading (kavpolit.com/kavkaz-dva-mira-dve-kultury/).

He argues that “in the Caucasus
today, two societies exist in parallel – the so-called people of force, who
mask themselves under the term ‘state,’ and all the rest who are resolving the
social, economic, and confessional questions” on their own to the best of their
ability and understanding, sometimes forming Cossack societies and at other
times mountain jamaats.

Such a situation, Shevchenko
suggests, is of course true for “all of Russia.”But “in the Caucasus, with its natural
democratic traditions of popular governance” – traditions Russians had but
largely lost in the 20th century – “this situation leads to the most
serious and tragic consequences.”

The “strong people” are those which
form “the triad of the bureaucracy, the force structures, and the so-called financial
institutions.” They are supplemented by the criminal world whose members have ties
“with all three heads of the neo-imperial eagle” which for some reasons it is
considered appropriate to call the authorities.”

“The system of relations of the
overwhelming majority of these people are based on personal ties which must not
be called simply corruption” because they form a system of administration “which
in principle excludes any forms of the democratic development of society” as a
threat to itself and its members.

To be sure, Shevchenko continues,
not everyone who is a part of these institutions wants to behave in this way, “but
they are forced to support the rules of the game” or face the most serious,
even deadly consequences.

All the rest of the population in the
North Caucasus, he argues, consists of individuals and groups who are simply
trying to arrange their own life “in part not thanks to but in spite of the
so-called organs of state power (the triad and the criminal world).” These
individuals do not oppose the state as such so much as those who rule in its
name.

The inability of these members of
the second world to achieve their goals because of the actions of the people of
force” leads “not simply to distrust in the effectiveness of the institutions
of power but also to their direct denial” or “in the best case” to the ignoring
of what the authorities are trying to do.

North
Caucasians, he writes, “are seeking an alternative to the social and political
schemas which have been discredited by the corrupt power of the triad and the
criminal world.” And in many cases, they are finding these alternative models
of social organization in ethnic or religious traditions.

If one considers the problem from
this perspective, Shevchenko insists, “there is no difference between the
attempts at self-organization of life in the Cossack stanitsas and that of the
mountaineer jamaats” – except that the Cossack leadership is prepared to
cooperate with the triad at the expense of the communities in whose name they
profess to speak.

The jamaats in contrast view the
authorities as illegitimate in principle, but in both cases, “this situation
offers great opportunities to radicals and terrorists of all masks and
nationalities,” from jihadism among the Islamic groups and “radical nationalism”
among the ethnic Russian ones.And that
is dangerous not only ideologically but practically.

Each of the two worlds in the North
Caucasus justifies its existence by pointing to the shortcomings of the other,
Shevchenko says; but there is a way out.It requires the intervention of the Russian president and his
plenipotentiary representative in the region who must recognize that their “many
ally” is not those who masquerade as the state “but the people who are
attempting to establish their own parallel structures of administration.”

That may not be easy for Putin and
his aide because some of those seeking to establish these structures have
ideologies entirely foreign to the two of them, but it is at least possible,
Shevchenko says, because of the still high level of trust in the federal
authorities among a population that has little good to say about local ones.

Journalists are constantly reporting
on this reality, Shevchenko says, but tragically, “they are being killed and
will continue to be killed” because “the profession of journalist in the
Caucasus is one of the most dangerous.” If Moscow is clever, it will provide protection
to journalists there, even to those who criticize it.

That is because these journalists
and the people they are reporting on are “the allies of those who want the
advancement of the norms of democracy, justice and freedom as written in the
Constitution but neither heard nor seen in the Caucasus.” To the extent the
Kremlin wants those values too, it should look beyond the triad to the people.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Staunton, March 30 – The ethnic
Russian community in Tajikistan has declined in size from more than 400,000 in
Gorbachev’s time to about 40,000 now, the smallest number of ethnic Russians in
any CIS country except Armenia, a trend that has had a major impact on the
internal life of that Central Asian country and on its relations with Moscow.

The Russian community of Tajikistan
began shortly after the Russian conquest of the region in the 1860s. It
expanded in the 1920s when Moscow sent Russians to build dams and train Tajiks.
And it exploded in size during World War II when many Russians and Russian
enterprises were evacuated from the European portion of the USSR.

After the war, many did not return
to the devastated areas of the Soviet Union, and their number was increased by Russians
and Russian speakers involved in economic construction projects.“By the end of the 1980s,” there were
approximately a half million” members of Russian-speaking nationalities, “more
than 80 percent” of whom were ethnic Russians.

But the upward trend of Soviet times
began to be reversed as a result of Tajik violence against Russian speakers
over the course of three days in mid-February 1990. To this day, “no one can
say exactly how many people died in those terrible days,” Dubnov says, but the
number was certainly in the hundreds.

Some sources say that these events were
a provocation “organized by the Tajik KGB” in order to generate fear and thus
support for the Soviet leadership against any nationalist challenges. But however
it was, this violence led to the rapid departure of many ethnic Russians and
Russian-speaking Tatars, Jews and members of other nationalities.

Indeed, Dubnov writes, the February 1990
events in Dushanbe which came only a month after Black January in Baku and the
introduction of Soviet forces there “led to even more bloodshed than among the
Azerbaijani population.”

Over the next decade and at an
accelerating rate after 1991, the percentage of Slavic ethnoses in the
Tajikistan population fell from 3.7 percent to 0.4 percent, a development that
was “almost a national catastrophe for the young republic” because among those
departing were many of the Tajikistan’s doctors, teachers and other
professionals.

Russian language use in Tajikistan has
declined as well, but neither as fast or as far, he continues. On the one hand,
the government there still makes provision of the use of Russian in official
life. And on the other, many Tajiks have worked in the Russian Federation or
studied in Russian-language institutions in their own country and abroad.

Other factors which have contributed to
the retention of Russian language among Tajiks is the presence of the Russian
base, whose units are dislocated in Dushanbe, Kulyab and Kurgan-Tyube and a
1997 agreement between Moscow and Dushanbe on dual citizenship, making
Tajikistan only the third post-Soviet state to do that (Armenia and
Turkmenistan are the others.)

But the exodus of Russians does matter,
Dubnov says. Two weeks ago, Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmon invited representatives
of the Tajik intelligentsia to a meeting. “There was not a single (?) Russian
language one among them or more precisely not a single representative of the Russian
ethnos.”

Russia is now taught as a foreign
language in Tajikistan, but there are several Russian language schools in
Dushanbe and one lycee and there are Russian sections in Tajik higher educational
institutions and representations of Russian universities in which Tajiks
currently enroll.

There is a limited amount of
Russian-language media, with Russian versions of the five major weeklies and
Russian sections in other newspapers. There are also three Russian-language
radio stations, and some Russian language programming on Tajik television.

Many Tajiks turn to television stations
in Russia, but this is a very mixed blessing, Dubnov says. While it allows them
to keep up their Russian, it also brings them face to face with the xenophobia against
Tajiks that is often found among Russians in the major cities of the Russian
Federation.

Today, there are no major Russian
businessmen in Tajikistan, and there is only one organization which assists the
Russian community, the Council of Russian Compatriots of Tajikistan which was
set up in 2004.It helps the needy and
the few surviving veterans of World War II.

What is somewhat surprising, Dubnov
says, is that Tajiks remain generally well disposed to ethnic Russians despite
what they see on Russian television and experience in Russian streets. There is
“perhaps” an explanation: some Tajiks may view this as “payment for the tragedy
which was experienced by ethnic Russians in Tajikistan almost a quarter of a
century ago.”

Staunton, March 30 – Russian
nationalists today often call for the formation of a genuinely ethnic Russian
Republic but, because they do not have a vision of how it might be created,
most of them are insisting on the destruction of the non-Russian republics of
the Russian Federation in order to increase the status of their nation,
according to a Moscow commentator.

But despite the obvious problems
with creating a Russian Republic – the attitudes of ethnic Russians about their
territory, their state-centered ideology, and the intermixture of ethnic groups
across the country – Maksim Sobesky suggests that at some point the creation of
that new state could be possible (nazaccent.ru/content/7199-russkaya-respublika-mechty-i-realnost.html).

In
an essay entitled “A Russian Republic – Myths and Reality,” Sobesky surveys the
current thinking about this possibility and argues that so far Russians have
not advanced very far toward defining it and thus are increasingly committed to
“liquidating the other national autonomies” because they do not have one of
their own.

Before
the Bolshevik revolution, the commentator argues, “the small peoples” – and he
lists the Finns and the Poles – “used their rights for the preservation of
cultural distinctions.” And he suggests, although much evidence points in an
alternative direction, that there was little “separatism” among them or others.

After
1917, however, the Bolsheviks for “populist” reasons “created dozens of
autonomous republics and designated their borders in an extremely arbitrary
manner.” These republics included significant numbers of ethnic Russians and
large portions of purely ethnically Russian lands.

That
allowed Moscow to control these entities, especially through the CPSU
organization.But with the end of party
rule and the departure of many ethnic Russians from these republics, Moscow no
longer has this “administrative lever,” and Russian is therefore confronted by “separatist
attitudes” and other “’ethnic’ problems.”

In 1991, in 14 of the non-Russian
republics of the RSFSR, the titular nationality formed less than half of the
population, and in others, only slightly more. But now, “two decades later, “the
number of ethnic Russians has fallen sharply in all Caucasus republics and in
Tuva.” And “experts do not exclude that soon these republics will become
mono-ethnic.”

That pattern and that prospect has
sparked a discussion among ethnic Russian nationalists about the need for “reforms”
of the existing system, reforms that they believe are entirely justified
because few foreign states offer their minorities ethno-territorial autonomies
but instead expect them to assimilate or at least acculturate.

Such discussion has been intensified
because Moscow refuses to recognize the ethnic Russians as the state-forming
nation and continues to disperse Russian nationalist meetings even as
separatist attitudes among non-Russians grow. In fact, Sobesky adds, “foreigners
are beginning to conceive of the national republics as independent states.”

He then proceeds to survey the
opinions of various Russian nationalist groupings on this issue. The
state-oriented right, such as Velikay Rossiya and Russkiye, want to maintain
control over the minorities but reduce their status.The NDP argues that “it is time to stop ‘feeding
the Caucasus’ and let the Caucasus republics survive,” if they can, on their
own.

Left-of-center nationalists in
Volnitsa call for a referendum on autonomy. Drugaya Rossiya, says the North
Caucasians should have the right “to live by the laws of traditional adat.”And Eduard Limonov, Sobesky continues, has
proposed stripping Chechnya and Daghestan of Cossack lands, while the Cossacks
seek the restoration of tsarist-era divisions.

In addition, he says, there are “nationalist-regionalists”
who talk about independence for Leningrad oblast or Siberia.Such attitudes in recent years have gone from
being little more than “ordinary Internet gabbing” to “an entire cultural
movement.” They can be dismissed only at Moscow’s peril.

To date, Russian nationalists
have not united on the issue of an ethnic Russian Republic any more than they
have on a variety of other issues. The most specific programs have come from
the RNE and Pamyat groups who respectively call for the formation of a purely
Russian republic and the unification to Russia of ethnic Russian regions in
neighboring countries.

The National Democratic Party
speaks in its program about ensuring equal rights for predominantly ethnic
Russian regions and the non-Russian republics, but some of its members “deny
the presence of an [ethnic] Russian nation and propagandize for the splitting
apart of the country into independent states.”

Velikaya Rossiya, Sobesky notes in
concluding his survey, urges the creation of “a unitary Russian state” and the
re-unification of ethnic Russian lands” now in neighboring states.Russkiye calls for a revision of internal
borders, the liquidation of some non-Russian republics, and limits on internal
migration into Russian areas from non-Russian ones.